1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to display of Interactive Electronic Media and, more particularly, to a method for parsing a database structure to produce tagged data that preserves the content, links, and structure of the original electronic media description.
2. Background Description
An initiative was started in the 1970's in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to create a paperless ship environment for technical manuals. Originally the documents were raster scanned paper documents. In 1992, three Interactive Electronic Technical Manual (IETM) standards were approved by the DoD. Currently, the U.S. DoD specification, MIL-PRF-87269, “Data Base, Revisable: Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals, For the Support Of” is currently the only available published standard for developing IETMs.
Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETMs) are designed to enable a technician to walk through maintenance procedures in a logical sequence and through fault isolation techniques. An Interactive Electronic Technical Manual (IETM) can be one of the many by-products of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)/eXtensible Markup Language (XML) content tagged data. The use of databases and legacy data for system maintenance/repair combined with SGML/XML tagged content can result in an IETM.
There are a number of varieties of IETMs in existence today. Each variation stores a description of the technical manual in a database structure. Some systems may use primitive flat file directory structure and some use more sophisticated relational databases. The stored data is in accordance with the DoD standard, but each system typically uses custom software to retrieve the data and create an interactive session of the manual or document. A technician views the manual on a terminal connected, either directly or via a network, to a host computer on which the database resides. As the technician makes interactive choices regarding which pages or procedures to view, additional data is retrieved from the database in order to format the requested pages.
It has been determined that relational database IETMs enhance data maintainability, thus reducing management costs, and is the best solution for large-scale IETM applications. These applications use tools applicable to Database Management Systems (DBMS), most of which have proprietary data-replication facilities, typically utilize network protocols and procedures different from those used by the World Wide Web, and as such, are not compliant with an interoperable architecture. In particular, Class 4 IETM applications require the services of a separate DBMS as well as the presentation method that is encapsulated in the IETM.
A class 4 IETM represents the group of hierarchically structured IETMs. Class 4 IETMs represent the primary desired IETM class for new acquisition programs currently being procured by the U.S. Navy. Class 4 is a complete departure from previous classes whose data is structured to support a classical publishing environment based on sentence, paragraph, chapters, pages, etc. Class 4 data is created and managed as hierarchical objects within a database. Class 4 IETMs are not bound by a predetermined sequence of presentation, and by building a hierarchical database structure provides the logic and the linkage among and between data that is inherently integral to hierarchical databases. Data is created once with no duplication. Links are provided between the IETM elements controlling navigation and allowing the user a customized view of data.
There are several known problems or disadvantages of viewing IETMs according the state of the art methods. For instance, IETM application developers utilize proprietary viewers for their IETM data. The Web solution for their IETMs require the services of a separate database management system (DBMS), as well as presentation methods that encapsulate the IETM presentation. These methods utilize specialized server and client software, creating additional infrastructure burdens, and resulting in cost and maintenance impacts associated with the products development. Thus, there is a need to enhance cross platform support and technical data interoperability. Class 4 IETMs are difficult to manage in a Web environment.
FIG. 1 shows a state of the art process for presenting an IETM to a user. First, a technical manual is described 100 by a series of functional descriptions, links, graphics and other data as necessary to fully describe a document. An authoring tool 102 is used to convert this description into a database 104. There are several authoring tools available as commercial off the shelf (COTS) products, such as AIMMS™ available from Raytheon Corporation of Lexington, Mass., DynaText® (available from INSO® Corporation of Providence, R.I., and Guide available from InfoAccess™ Inc. of Belleview, Wash. Each tool uses its own database format, some of which are merely directory structures containing files, and some may be relational databases. A presentation tool 106 is then required to retrieve the manual description from the database 104 and display the information to the user 108. Information displayed can be graphical 109 or textual 110, as defined in the database 104. These current systems are often inefficient and inadequate for standalone user environments for the reasons stated above.